The Calendar of Postiness

Building… A True Luigiian Republic

(The following is an excerpt from a speech the Governor of the Luigiian Republic gave to The University of the Luigiian Republic. Reprinted here and on MOCPages.com with his permission.)

You know, as Lego designers, we always tend to put emphasis on design rather than function. We build big, beautiful houses and models that no minifigure could ever use. In short, we do it for ourselves.

And yet, as Luigiville grows exponentially larger every day, I’ve worked to change that. Instead of just building structures that look good, mine are intended primarily as… well… houses. In other words, buildings Lego minifigures can use.

“But”, you say, “they’re dead. As in not alive. Why build something nobody will ever use?”

My point exactly, which is why I’ve worked hard to automate, robotize, and give a voice to these little mute plastic men we put in our cities. For me, pretend movement isn’t enough: I want Sims that are there, in front of me, in real life, not on a screen.

The name “Luigiian Republic” isn’t a misnomer. I work to make pseudo-campaigns for Governor, and come up with statistics using random number generators and such. I try to give voice to them that way. And of course, it didn’t work very well at first, because back then I’d make a person’s “voice” using a roll of the dice, assuming that people choose in an election campaign at the drop of a hat, with no other rhyme or reason. It was hard, boring, tedious, and difficult to use.

In my last “election”, I used an Excel sheet, only by then I had significantly changed the system. Instead of just using it like a “virtual dice”, I used the program’s random number generator to make various viewpoints on various issues. For example, first was the random number I would use for the minifig’s Social Security number. Then, above all this, the columns would be, for example, “sexuality”, “political affiliation”, “Hunting and Fishing”, “Sports”, “Computers”, “Random” (for random events on election day), and, of course, the ever-present “Immigration” issue. For each of these, I’d assign a random number between -3 and 3, and, excepting “Random”, would copy, and Paste Value Only (otherwise it keeps randomizing, and I wanted to keep these opinions fairly consistent). More negative was liberal on that issue (or hobby; assuming that some hobbies naturally breed political opinions, and others would harbor friendships changing such opinions), whereas more positive was more conservative. Then, I’d use its AutoSum feature to sum up each person’s opinion, convert each one into only it’s value +1 or -1 (Excel is capable of doing all of this, and I appreciated that), and use that as the person’s “vote.” I put myself as the liberal, and my opponent, Luigi Mario of the opposition party, as the conservative. (Ironically, there are more liberals than conservatives in Luigiville. Even more ironically, the west side Luigiville Districts were liberal; easterners were more conservative.)

Believe it or not, I’m going to carry this even further, as if my social life could get worse than to be similar to a mad scientist cooped up in his parents’ basement all night. But to do this, I have to find an even more powerful program, such as BASIC or C++. But I need to know exactly what I’ll need for such basic applications as adding, for example, values like “Taxes” up each year automatically. The program mostly needs to do all of the above, plus add up things like taxes and income, which means that it has to be able to perform certain functions automatically, without me telling me to do it. Like, each Friday, each person automatically has a certain amount added to his money account, and each week on Saturday, a certain amount is subtracted for “groceries”, each month for “Taxes”, each year for “Opinion Poll”, and so on. What program do you think is right for me?

I personally think “Psychotherapy” is the answer. But, hey, you never know.